It was the largest hazard mitigation program in FEMA's history – some $1.2 billion in grant money made available through several programs to protect homes from future flooding.

But years later, some of the houses it was designed to help are themselves a hazard as homeowners try to navigate a sea of red tape. There are hundreds still left hanging on, and the program itself may be to blame.

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A few years after Hurricane Katrina, Velton Welch and his wife paid a contractor $50,000 to elevate their Uptown home.

"We raised it up. Got halfway. Was supposed to be getting advance payments from the mitigation personnel and everything just stopped," he said.

They said they've been calling the state Hazard Mitigation Grant Office every day.

"One hundred percent I feel forgotten. You call and you constantly get a message," Welch said.

In the meantime, their home is falling apart.

Last year, the porch came crashing down.

"I was on my way to church, walking out the gate and it just came down like, boom! Made a big old noise. Then the wires and stuff were sparking," Elander Davis said.

When he took over in 2012, the office had distributed only $366 million of the $650 million promised to nearly 10,000 applicants.

WDSU documented the problems two years ago. Today, the amount spent has doubled, with $627 million committed to projects.

"We want to make sure the dollars can be accounted for and, at this point, we have aligned a great deal of that," Taffaro said.

Taffaro said in the initial rush to get money out the door after Katrina, contractor oversight was a challenge.

"We were relying specifically on municipalities. Most inspection offices weren't prepared or had a routine of the number of elevation projects in their usual work flow," he said.

As a result, he said about 200 projects are still in limbo, impacted by fraud, shoddy work, or abandoned altogether.

"So what we've done is we've put in place firms to actually go out and check on the projects," Taffaro said.

The state has also tried to improve communications with municipalities and is trying to do more to assist homeowners.

"Instead of just abandoning the homeowner and saying it's a civil matter, we also work with various agencies -- district attorneys, Attorney General's office, the Governor's Office -- to make sure that we go after those funds and get those funds back," Taffaro said.

Meantime, four years later, Velton Welch is waiting. "We still don't know where we stand," he said.

The Welches wonder if it'd be better to just tear their home down and start over, but they're not going to.

"I want to be back in my home," Welch said.

After WDSU spoke to Taffaro the state sent an inspector to the Welch's home. An additional payment to them was approved.